Oranges and lemons

by Mary C. E. Wemyss

XII

An old man cried, “Umbrella to sell.” It had no handle.

He met an old woman who cried she had an umbrella

to sell, but only the handle. Each called what they had

an umbrella, but only the man’s could keep off the rain.

There is a small book, written by one of the greatest masters of fiction. No romance stirs the blood, excites the imagination of weary men, as this book does. Lever, Dumas, Hugo are pigmies compared to this giant among story-tellers.

It is a small book—no matter its colour—its pages number some hundreds, and they can be read, re-read, and read yet again. On every page is the same story differently, and delightfully told. It never palls. A wise woman is she who, seeing her husband tired and perhaps bored, slips into his hands this volume of immortal prose. If he be a sportsman, his chair comfortable, and the fire brightly burning, all his worries will vanish like “smoke” on the hillside, and for the space of some hours he will be at peace, tramping once again the moors, fishing the rivers, the lochs, and climbing the hills he loves. Marcus, lonely and deserted, opened the book and read:

£600:	Exceptionally good shooting. Average bag 245 brace grouse. Lodge contains dining-room, drawing-room, ten bedrooms, bathroom, and complete offices. Hotel, post, telegraph, quite close. Nearest station twenty-five miles. Very bracing climate and lovely scenery. Proprietor pays—etc.
£500:	Beautiful lodge, four and a half miles from station. Contains 4 public rooms, 6 bedrooms, bathroom, and ample servants’ accommodation. Stabling, coach house. Kennels, gardens, 5000 acres, shooting yielding 80 brace grouse, 3000 rabbits, 100 hares, 200 brace partridges, 100 snipe, 200 pheasants, 20 duck, roe deer and plover, woodcock. Good trout fishing in lochs and burns. Salmon fishing can be had.
£450:	10,000 acres, mostly moorland, yielding about 250 brace grouse (limit), four stags, besides other game. Good woodcock and snipe and wild fowl shooting, in winter. Exclusive right to the fishing in whole of river, six miles, both banks. And in one of the finest lochs in Scotland, which holds sea trout and occasionally a salmon. Lodge situated in the midst of magnificent scenery—

Marcus leant forward and re-filled his pipe—the shadow of a great peace in his eyes—a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He had no wish to be disturbed—let Shan’t stay with her aunt, and Diana, too, if she wanted to—it was like the old game of Oranges and Lemons. They could choose; he was Oranges—

Last season’s bag—6 stags, 200 brace grouse, 20 wild fowl, 111 hares, and 90 sea trout—

He sighed and turned the pages.

£2000:

Splendid sporting domain, yielding 80 or 84 stags, 500 brace grouse and there are also roe deer, hares, wild fowl, salmon and sea trout. Fishing in river from both banks, also trout fishing in well-known loch and excellent trout fishing in many hill lochs—good sea fishing [this for Pillar]. Very comfortable lodge situated at the head of one of the finest lochs in Scotland, amidst magnificent scenery—20 miles from station. Post and telegraph close by. Lodge contains—hall, drawing-room, dining-room, smoking-room, gun room, ample bedroom accommodation, two bathrooms, complete offices. Proprietor pays—

“Not much,” murmured Marcus.

£250.

£200.

£270.

£300:—each in its small way buying for August and September perfect happiness, and Marcus knew what that perfect happiness might be. Agents say much, sometimes more than they need, but do they ever say anything of six o’clock in the morning, on the moor, when the spiders’ webs, set with diamonds, are slung from one tuft of heather to another, making a wealth of jewels of untold value? Do they ever describe the joy of walking home knee-deep in scented purple heather right into the setting sun, after a day on the hill? Do they ever describe a fine day on the West Coast, as the West Coast alone knows it? A fine day in Skye? No day, for pure glory of fineness, can compare with it. (And it might always be fine in Skye if people really believed in fairies.) Skye paints her foreground as no other foreground is painted, so rich in colour, so deep—so varied. No skies can vie with hers in blueness, when they are blue. No distance is so enchanting in its softness. No breeze so caressing in its gentleness. No hills can compare with the Cuchullins in their splendid ruggedness, and the sun never sets in Scotland, leaving behind him more glorious promises of his coming again than he does in Skye. Do agents count these things? They must—and that is why—if the grouse fail, the deer fade away, and the fish sulk—the man who truly loves his Scotland will always pay his rent without murmuring, for those glorious two months: and the day he gets back to London, if he be a proper man, he will sit himself down in his chair, his hand will reach out to the table at his elbow, and he will take from the table a book that his wife, if she be a wise wife, has placed there, and he will open it at any page and read—

£500—beau-ti-ful lodge, 40 miles from station—Contains—etc.—bag should include—250 brace grouse, good woodcock and snipe—wild fowl—in the winter—Exclusive right—

This is the book Marcus read on his return to London after sending Shan’t back to the aunt of his detestation. It is a work of fiction that should be in all circulating libraries, yet it is in none. During the reading it came upon him—the inspiration—to offer as a counter-attraction to Bestways—Scotland!

Could Diana resist a moor in Scotland? To shoot over which she might ask any one she liked. What would Aunt Elsie do against a force so overwhelming as this? It was late in the season to get a place, but sometimes late in the day even a good place is to be had. Sometimes the best places might be picked up at the last moment.

The next day Marcus lunched at his club, having interviewed agents both hopeful and depressing. At the club he met a friend plunged in the depths of melancholy. So deeply immersed was he that Marcus rose buoyant on the crest of a wave of exultation. The friend’s wife was ill. Marcus, sobered, expressed sympathy: the man, to a certain extent, had brought it on himself by having a wife, but still Marcus was sorry she was ill. Added to that the man had taken a place in Scotland to which he could not go in consequence of his wife’s illness and the agents said it was too late to sub-let it. Here Marcus was really sympathetic. What sort of a place was it?—and out it all came—the same grand old story. The blood that had run through the veins of Marcus now coursed and by the end of luncheon the moor was practically his—he had walked it. Its geographical position was scored on the tablecloth: its marches defined by spoons and forks. So much was the place his that he felt justified in telegraphing to Diana—“Got place Scotland, will you come?” What about the hill now upon which Elsie had imagined herself standing looking down upon poor Marcus?

When Diana got the telegram she read it aloud, and Elsie began feebly about a picnic—and more picnics—and a possible dance—and more dances, but Diana’s heart was already in the Highlands. “Darling Uncle Man!” she cried. “Delicious old Marky Man!” And Marcus put his head under her hand and swallowed with gratitude. “Not you, you darling, blessed black angel,” she said.

“Bribery and corruption,” said Aunt Elsie, as she pulled furiously at the weeds in the garden; “pure bribery—it isn’t that the child cares for him—she only goes—because she wants to go to Scotland. I shall at least have Dick. He would never desert me.” And to make sure of that she went in and wrote to Dick—wrote of cricket matches—wrote in glowing terms, showing an amazing knowledge of the game, which she felt was bound to impress a small nephew. To which letter Dick wrote back:

Dear Aunt Elsie,—It’s jolly decent of you, but I’m a bit fed up with cricket, and what’s more I might get stale if I played too much, and what’s still more to the purpose is that Taboret Major has asked me to go to Scotland. His people have taken a sort of castle there—what d’you say to that? Don’t say no and break the heart of your anxious nephew. Taboret Major says it’s a rippin’ place and there’s lots of shooting and fishing. Old Wane says it’s a chance that shouldn’t be missed—so I say.

Your loving and hopeful
Dick

P.S. What about my being confirmed next term? Do you think I need? I don’t feel much like it at present and Taboret Major isn’t going to be because he’s going to join the Scotch religion. I expect I shall be converted when I’m in Scotland, so had I better wait to see? But then I ought to say that Taboret Major is going to wear a kilt. I expect this makes a difference. What do you think?

So even Dick was denied her, and Elsie went out into her garden where the borders were full of blossoms which Diana loved, and into the kitchen garden where grew vegetable marrows, things which Dick had sworn he loved, and the aunt felt she had laboured in vain. She had sown and Uncle Marcus would reap.